CDA: Catherine O'Hara

Oh my I was not prepared for this one. My brother Howard texted me yesterday to alert me to the death of the extraordinary Catherine O'Hara at the too young age of 71.

Like many of my generation I first encountered her on SCTV. My favorite of her characters was Lola Heatherton, a dimly talented nightclub performer, her name pointing us to Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon mainstays Lola Falana and Joey Heatherton.

She was delightful in Beetlejuice (1988) but I'm not so into that movie. I'm not going to include a clip from Home Alone (1990) because would you believe I've never seen it...? Every Christmas season I mean to watch it. The movie from this period of her career that I want to highlight is an underappreciated Martin Scorcese comedy called After Hours. She's one of what Howard refers to as the "nightmare blondes" in this movie. Her character is SO CRUEL in this scene!

How about this jewel from 1985, a short film that she and SCTV castmate Andrea Martin wrote and directed for a film festival on The David Letterman Show. On the subject of PMS! My favorite sequence is the Calvin Klein Obsession parody at around 4:19.

Then in the 90s O'Hara started her residency with what I call The Guffman Group, the largely improvised mockumentaries directed by Christopher Guest and starring some combination of her, Guest, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Parker Posey, Bob Balaban, John Michael Higgins, Michael McKean, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch, and others. The Guffman movies are:

Waiting for Guffman (1996)

Best in Show (2000)

A Mighty Wind (2003)

For Your Consideration (2006)

My favorite moment from these movies is this one, with her doing a funny walk in Best In Show.

But I think for the current generation she'll be best remembered as Moira Rose on Schitt's Creeek. It took me a while to get into this show - - I watched the first couple of episodes when it was first on and I was not grabbed. A few friends told me to give it another try and what else was there to do during Covid lockdown? I thought season one, while very funny, had a hard time finding its tone. Then in the finale of season 2 Moira and her husband Johnny (played by the immensely talented Eugene Levy, another castmate from SCTV) run into some old friends in a restaurant and Johnny gives them What For in the most scathing and yet delicate manner. It was an astonishing moment, I wasn't prepared for the emotional impact of that. The rest of the series had many similar emotional moments but still didn't hold back on the laughs. O’Hara’s performance strode the divide between delightfully ridiculous and genuinely touching.

My favorite moment from Schitt's Creek is this one, a clip I've watched oh so many times.

A friend just told me that she had an unexpected dramatic turn in three episodes of The Last of Us. I don't need too much encouragement to check out anything starring my next boyfriend Pedro Pascal... I think I know what my next binge show is.